Orwell parody
The NY Times is reporting that an American novelist has written a parody of "Animal Farm", Orwell's 1945 classic about the evils of communism, in which Snowball (the exiled pig) returns to the farm and sets up a capitalist state - leading to misery for all the animals. The Book is called "Snowball's Chance", and the author is John Reed. Apparently Orwell's estate is not happy. And apparently there is an "apocalyptic ending" which the Orwell estate ain't happy about.
An IP infringement?
We could have a Gone with the Wind/Wind Done Gone argument here. Alice Randall in that case wrote a novel which rewrote the stories of "Gone with the Wind" from the perspective of a mulatto on the Tara property. Again, the relevant estate sued and in that case, it did end up going to court in the US. Randall succeeded in overturning an injunction that prevented her publishing the book - on the ground of copyright infringement.
As in the Randall case, here Reed has chosen his target deliberately. According to the NYT, Reed post 9/11 decided that the world had a new form of evil to deal with - within American corporate capitalism, and in American arrogance in protecting its interests in the Middle East oil fields. To write against this, Reed choose the 'ultiamte expression of pro-capitalist ideology' - "Animal Farm", which "has inoculated generations of schoolchildren against the evils of communism" (quoting Reed's words).
Actually, from the NYT description, the parody sounds a bit crude and basic to me. As a capitalist 'state', the farm expands, takes over (woodland) territory, bombs beaver dams to free the flow of water (oil). Then the ecology is destroyed; there is overdevelopment; it becomes a giant theme park, and the woodland creatures attack the twin windmills. Yeah. real subtle. But not something Orwell's estate could stop.